"This is ridiculous," he says angrily, jaw clenching. He paces about the dining room table, fingers twisted in his hair, chest heaving. "This is a trick, that's all. It's a trick, or—or—someone laced the drinks at the pub, or it's some kind of post-metacrisis hallucination, or it's a dream—"

"It is a dream," Donna tells him, and something about her gentle tone makes him want to throttle her. The initial shock of her appearance has dulled enough that the way she keeps talking to him, like he's some kind of wild animal she needs to soothe, some kind of dangerous snarling thing, is driving him batty. "You're dreaming right now, Doctor, that's what I'm trying to tell you—"

"You're wrong," the Doctor shoots back. "I would know if this wasn't real, I would know it."

"Doctor," Donna says patiently, and since when is she so stoic and reasonable? The Doctor would much prefer it if she shouted and stomped her feet, but she's just standing there, solid and resolute and damnably calm. "Don't you think the fact that I'm right here, right now, sort of proves that something is wrong?"

"Donna, it's not that I'm not happy to see you, but—"

"But don't you remember, Doctor? You were hurt. You got stung. You were on a mission for Torchwood, and one of the Morpheus Drones—"

A flash of memory hits him, unbidden, and pain throbs at the base of his skull.

"Wait," the Doctor breathes.

He steps back, shaking his head. "Wait. No. I did get stung, but it was a minor injury. Healed like that." The Doctor snaps his fingers for emphasis, to show just how quick like that is. Laughing, he looks to Rose for reassurance, for backup, but she's oddly quiet, watching everything unfold from her seat at the table.

"This is preposterous," the Doctor announces. "I'm sorry. Like I said, Donna, I'm glad to see you, absolutely thrilled that you're all right, but I can't just—"

"Please, I know it's hard to hear—"

"You can't reasonably expect me to accept this claim at face value. You can't—"

"Doctor."

"—just march in here, out of nowhere, and expect me to believe that—"

"Doctor, you know something is wrong—"

"No. I don't want to hear it!"

"It doesn't matter if you want to hear it or not," Donna snaps back, drawing herself up to her full height. She's still significantly shorter than him, but something about her fills the room, makes him flinch away, and that's the Donna he remembers. "It's the bloody truth!"

Donna's hands ball into fists and her lips purse together in a thin line. "You think I want to tell you any of this?" she asks, her voice wavering. "You think I want to be the one breaking it to you, that your happy little bubble here is made out of nothing? Not even something as substantial as a spiderweb—just pure nothing? That your synapses are degrading, your body is dying, and all of this sentimental rot is just your brain throwing one last hurrah before the toxins shut it down?"

(He's watching a mediocre film, and halfway through—)

"Stop," the Doctor says, his head swimming.

"I haven't got a choice, Doctor," Donna pleads. "This is your body's last-ditch effort to reason with you. It knows you won't listen to yourself—god knows you've ignored all the signs, every other effort—but it's hoping you'll listen to me, what's left of me inside your head. But you already know something's off. You've known it for ages."

(His mobile rings, and either Rose was just kissing him, or he was just having the most wonderful dream—)

"No, Donna. Please—"

"You know something's wrong, you know this isn't real—"

"Shut up!" the Doctor shouts, covering his ears. "Please, for goodness' sake, shut up!"

"You know I'm telling the truth!" Donna shouts over him, pounding the table. "C'mon, Spaceman! Get it through your thick head! How else would I be here, eh? You know there aren't any cracks left between the universes, and you sure as hell know there isn't any Donna Noble in this world. You know, you checked, you looked. And then you looked again. There's no Donna Noble here, not even a hint, not even a cell of the woman that you knew back in your own universe. So how would I be here if any of this was real? Hmm?"

She bangs the table again. "How?"

("Aren't you tired?" she asks, and—)

Tearing himself away, the Doctor turns back to Rose, hands wide open in a request for any kind of help she can offer, but she is just as silent as she has been throughout the entire conversation, sitting quiet and still. Draped in his shirt, several sizes too large for her, she looks strangely small.

The Doctor gathers up the pieces of his dignity. He can do this. He can get through this. He can do it for her.

"Say I believe you," he says to Donna, breathing heavily. "Say you're right. How much of this is a dream? How much of this have I made up in the last few hours, or days, or however long since I got stung?"

He steels himself. "How do I know what's real, and what's not?"

Donna heaves a sigh in frustration. "I mean, I don't need to tell you how this works. They're basically the same as the Morpheus Drones back in our own universe; this is all your knowledge I'm drawing from. You already know all of it."

"Remind me."

"Fine," Donna says with a hmph. "The Morpheus toxin targets your autonomic nervous system, as you know, and you lapse into a coma. But this toxin is clever. In an attempt to camouflage itself, keep your body from finding it and fighting back, it overstimulates your neurotransmitters, flooding your brain with dopamine. So your head comes up with all these happy dreams, happy thoughts, happy memories, or…"

Donna pauses. "…or sad memories modified to be happy."

(He's terribly bored doing the dishes, but he doesn't have to be—)

The Doctor drags both of his hands over his face. "It's affecting my memories?" he asks weakly. "But it can't have. Surely I'm not so human now that I can't tell memories from dreams."

"All while you're thinking happy thoughts, your autonomic nervous system is slowly shutting down," Donna continues. "If you don't wake up in time, your body just stops working. Your brain dies. But you're so happy you don't want to wake up. It's literally killing you with kindness, Doctor."

"You still haven't answered my question," the Doctor says stubbornly. "If what you're saying is true—and that's a big if, mind—how do I know the difference between my dreams and my memories? How do I know what's real?"

Picking nervously at the cuff of her jacket-sleeve, Donna stalls for time, suddenly nervous. "You're not going to like the answer," she says.

The Doctor's brow quirks impatiently. He gestures for her to continue.

Donna swallows. "Think about it," she says, her words slow. "There's one thing here that doesn't make sense. One thing, out of all your memories, that's out of place. One thing that doesn't belong."

Heavy silence follows in the wake of her pronouncement; the air is thick and still.

"Oh god," pipes up a small voice. "It's me."


The Doctor pales. He turns back to Rose, still sitting at the table; her hands are clenched tight and her eyes stare, unseeing.

"It's got to be me," Rose whispers. "I'm not real."

"Don't be stupid," the Doctor hisses at her, slamming the bedroom door shut behind him. "Of course you're real."

"What if I'm not, though?" Rose argues softly, walking around the room as if in a daze. "Not like this, anyway."

A single hysterical peal of laughter escapes before the Doctor can stop it, teeth clamping together like a vice. "I can't believe this. What's gotten into you? Why would you even say that?"

Rose shrugs. "It's just…it makes a kind of sense, is all."

The Doctor grabs her by the shoulders, looking deep into her eyes. "No. You're real, Rose. As real as anything. Donna—or the thing out there that looks like Donna—could be completely wrong about what's going on. There's nothing that guarantees she's right, nothing that proves she is what she says she is, nothing at all. All right?"

Rose averts her gaze and the Doctor's hands slide up to frame her face, forcing her to look at him.

"Please," he says, and god, he really has changed if he's going to let himself openly beg like this.

She trembles under his touch. "Donna said something didn't belong here. Doctor…it's got to be me."

Drawing in a sharp breath to calm himself (it doesn't work, his heart is still racing like he just ran a bloody marathon, and this stupid human body will quit on him if he keeps this up), the Doctor lets go of her, stepping away. He pinches the bridge of his nose. Legs gone wibbly, he sits down on the bed. He counts to ten, not because he thinks it will work, but because he hasn't got any better ideas.

"I was so determined to get back to the other universe," Rose says, and her voice is hollow. She sounds impossibly far away. "I didn't let anything stop me. Not Mum, not Pete, not Torchwood regulations or red tape, not the laws of physics, not mathematical impossibility. I didn't even let the walls between universes keep me away. So why am I here?"

(He watches the targets through a cover of bioluminescent plants and trees, and thinks a trip to Cheem would be a good date if she was—)

"What if this version of me is just a side-effect of the toxin, and I don't know any better? What if this is just your brain working me into your memories, making them happier, giving you what you want before you die? What if I never came back to this universe at all…what if I'm gone?"

(The kitchen floor is cold and the stew is scalding and she's all he wants, and he wishes he could tell her—)

"You're not," the Doctor insists quietly. "You're here, with me. You chose me."

"Maybe I didn't."

The Doctor looks up and her face is blurry. He blinks moisture out of his eyes, damming the tears back before they have a chance to fall. Rose swims back into view in his periphery, sitting next to him on the bed, and he wonders how she would be able to leave an indent in the duvet, how her fair skin could strike such a contrast against the blood-red poppy print, how her body could be so warm next to his, if she wasn't real.

"You said I was enough for you," he hears himself tell her. "You said you were happy."

"And you are, and I am," she replies. "But…can you remember? What really happened, the day we came back here?"

(He wants to kiss her so badly, and all he has to do is—)

He shakes his head, both no and please don't tell me.

"I asked you what you said," Rose says, curling her fingers around his, where they fist in the bedclothes. "I asked you what you were going to say to me, that day on the beach."

A flash of color pops into the Doctor's head, greys and pinks painted in lazy watercolor strokes, and he tastes the salt on the air, hears the crashing of waves, sees Rose's face, cautious but hopeful.

(The other Doctor won't say it, but he will.)

"I just needed to know you weren't going to leave me again," Rose says, tears glittering in the corners of her eyes. "I would have stayed, I would have chosen you, if you'd just told me."

"And I did," he says insistently. "I told you what I was going to say. I said it. I've said it a hundred times since. I love you."

Rose shakes her head. "Maybe in another timeline, Doctor. Maybe in a dream."

(Won't he?)

With a sick feeling, he realizes he doesn't remember.

(He watches the TARDIS disappear)

(and looks over star charts)

(and takes the lead on missions)

(and he cooks and he washes and he wishes)

(and the movie wouldn't be half so bad if someone just watched it with him)

(and the expanse of bed next to him is still and vast and cold)

(and the cottage is so empty for all the reminders of her that still exist everywhere)

(and he wonders if she could ever be truly happy with the other him, in the other universe)

(and his hands curl and uncurl, feeling strangely empty)

"No," the Doctor says, pulling away from her. He backs away, smacking into the bedside table so hard that its contents rattle, his eyes blown wide.

"Doctor, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry—"

He pushes past her out of the room.


It doesn't take long for Donna—or the part of his subconscious that looks like Donna, or a trick that looks like Donna, or a nightmare—to find him sitting out in the garden, staring emptily at a nightingale perched on the gate, twirling a blue forget-me-not between his fingers.

(Have these flowers ever grown out here before? His stomach sinks because he just doesn't know.)

"Do me a favor," Donna says, fanning out her jacket before she sits on the ground next to him, "and button up that shirt. Nobody wants to see that chest, Casanova."

"So this is it," the Doctor says bitterly. "This is my choice, according to you—stay in here, stay happy for however long I've got—days, hours, minutes—or wake up, and have nothing, and no one. Die happy with my false memories of Rose, or live cold, and miserable, and alone."

"That's it, I'm afraid. You can't stay in this world, Doctor. I'm sorry."

The Doctor's fingers close around the flower, and the petals bruise beneath his grasp.

"Or," he says, "maybe there's an entirely viable third option here."

"Oh?"

"Perhaps you're right, and I'm dreaming," the Doctor replies thoughtfully. He considers for a moment. "Well, there's no maybe about it; clearly, something is wrong right now, because you're here, and my memories are all muddy, and Rose has gone just a bit existentially mad. But there's nothing that shows I've been dreaming as much as you say. Nothing proves that the Morpheus toxin dreamed up Rose for me."

He scratches the back of his neck, winces when his fingernails graze the still-fresh wound there. "Hell, for all I know, this could be affecting Rose, too," he continues. "If memory serves—and it usually does—telepathy throws the Drones' process off a bit. I could be projecting my dream to Rose, whether I want to or not. That would certainly explain her confusion. It would also explain her self-awareness—after all, what good is a hallucination if it doesn't think it's real?"

"Fair point," Donna says, but her eyes are narrowed in suspicion.

"The fact of the matter is, there's no reason for me to believe that the last few months didn't happen exactly the way I think they did. Everything I thought, everything I remembered, before you came along and threw a wrench in the works, could be 100% accurate. Or at least, everything up until I got stung. I could wake up right now, in this world or another, and everything could be fine. Because when it comes down to it, there's only one real anomaly."

He doesn't look at her. "Donna…the only thing that truly doesn't belong here is you."

Donna frowns. "I suppose you're technically right, but, Doctor…are you really willing to take that chance?"

The Doctor's fists tightens, and the flower in his hand crumples, oozing something sickly blue over his skin.


He finds Rose where he left her, sitting on their bed. She looks up when he approaches, eyes searching his face.

Pausing, the Doctor looks her over. He drinks everything in—and wonders if she's doing the same—cataloguing everything from her hands (tight and white-knuckled on her knees) to her nails (bitten short) to her hair (cornsilk-pale, darker at the roots, due a touch-up soon) to her lips (pink, full) to her eyes (whiskey-colored, shining; surely he couldn't dream up anything comparable) and everything outside and in-between. And he very adamantly doesn't tell himself it's just in case.

Wordlessly, the Doctor climbs into bed, and Rose moves with him, inching back until her head hits her pillow. Rose pulls the duvet over them both; the instant she's done, the Doctor draws her into his arms, wrapping himself around her tightly, as snug as he can. The embrace is so close, it's surely uncomfortable for them both, but he doesn't care, and when her arms cinch tightly around him in return, he suspects she doesn't care either. He closes his eyes and loses himself in the deep swell and fall of her breathing, the scent of her hair, the warmth of her exhales on his neck. Her heart gently pitter-patters beneath his fingertips, drumming solidly behind her ribs; he almost imagines he can feel it beating in his own chest, a second pulse beating in time with his own.


He wakes up.